Trudy Tyler and the three camps of lockdown exercise

To exercise or not to exercise, that is the real question for an out-of-shape lockdownee. By Christine Manby

Was this the moment to tell her I hadn’t run on purpose since 1990, during my last ever school cross-country? (Illustration by Tom Ford)

It seems to me that in lockdown people have fallen into three fitness tribes. There are those who have gone mad for it, fitting up the spare room as a home gym and spending the money they would have spent on going out on a Peloton. There are those who have given up altogether, succumbing absolutely to the siren call of the sofa. And there are those, like me, who have addressed the issue of exercise somewhat sporadically, embarking on a number of new regimes with great enthusiasm, only to end up having to retreat back to the sofa with ice packs and painkillers two days into each new fitness craze.

In the olden days I dragged myself to pilates once a week, so during the first lockdown I tried to keep that up – following workout videos on line. That went horribly wrong when I followed an NHS pilates video for back pain that left me with a slipped disc. In November’s brief lockdown, I didn’t bother, reasoning it was only three weeks and it wasn’t worth doing myself an injury. At the start of this lockdown, I vowed to walk 15,000 steps a day and do at least twenty minutes of yoga. I signed up to Yoga With Adriene and started receiving her daily inspirational emails. A few weeks later, I unsubscribed. Which left the walking. Eight thousand steps on a good day. A very good day.

So when my neighbour Brenda suggested that I join her for a run, what I should have said was “No, thanks”. What I accidentally said was, “Er, sure, why not?” Brenda was in her seventies. How painful could it be?